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Introduction
The concept of emotional intelligence was first brought into scientific terms in 1990 by Jack Mayer and Peter Salovey. Their work was built off of the previous concepts of social intelligence introduced by Nancy Cantor and John Kihlstrom in the late 1980's. Mayer and Salovey viewed emotional intelligence as a true form of intelligence that needed to be scientifically measured. They later went on to develop a four branch model to illustrate their findings. Recently another psychologist, Daniel Goleman, proposed a theory on emotional intelligence that centered around five traits. Developments have also been made on measuring emotional intelligence, and analyzing it's correlation with an individual's level of success.
Conceptual Overview
By this point you have probably began to ask yourself the question what is emotional intelligence? In a simple definition one may say that it is the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions (Myers, 2007). A more extensive definition would show emotional intelligence as the capacity to reason about emotions, and of emotions to enhance thinking, including the ability to perceive and generate emotions to assist in thought, while understanding emotions and emotional knowledge with regulations conducive to facilitating intellectual growth (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, 2004). It can also be displayed as a construct that reflects a person’s inner capacity to manage emotional responses in social situations (Muchinsky, 2006). It is also important to recognize that developing emotional intelligence, also known as simply EQ or EI, not only involves self reflection, but empathy as well (Duffy & Atwater, 2008).
To properly comprehend the definition of emotional intelligence, one must also take in the context of the words emotion and intelligence separately. Emotion refers to a state of feeling that includes physiological responses and cognitions, while conveying information...